Permanently Destroy Digital Memory.

Hello and welcome to this quick look at the different methods of ensuring permanent hard drive data erasure. Let us start with a super quick history lesson to explain one of the many different reasons that hard drives are so difficult to destroy. Early computers, like the IBM701, were built for defence, and mainly used to help detect the threat of Soviet bomber attacks. In fact, the Cold War with Russia (then head of the Soviet Union) was such a big deal that both sides developed weapons just to take out each other’s computers!

Forged from the cold steal of war, Hard Drives have been built to survive even a EMP discharge from a nuclear blast. In fact, Solid State Drives are almost impervious to electromagnetic wiping. With that in mind, if you are thinking about hard drive degaussing with an EMP then perhaps think again.

I’m sure EMP degaussing works for some drives but what do you use if you really want to wipe out all those ones-and-zeros. Well, you could always try shredding your old hard drives. Hard drive shredding machines must shred a drive down into tiny bits in order to ensure those bits, don’t become bites again. However, there is a problem, a lot of hard drive shredders don’t always make the grade, especially as their gears become worn down over time.

So that’s degaussing and shredding covered, now we are just left with good old fashion hard drive wiping? I’m sure you already know that deleting and formatting files will not wipe them away forever. In reality it is only the path to the file that gets deleted when you hit the DEL key, this means the file can still be recovered.

The only true method of ensuring your hard drive is permanently wiped is to perform a military grade data overwrite. In fact, the process of overwriting an entire hard drive pretty much ensures permanent erasure, with zero chance of data ever being recovered again. With all that said, there is still a problem with hard drive wiping. Hard disk drives are mechanical, which means the data wiping process of overwriting can be tediously slow. If you have a data center full of drives you could be wiping for weeks.

However, there is a tide of change that is about to seriously affect the world of hard drive wiping. It’s been caused by a change in the drive technology itself. Let me explain it like this; a 1TB hard disk wipe can take around 2 hours but the equivalent SSD wipe, can take less than 6 minutes!

There is no question that server SSD is a bit pricier than HDD but it definitely performs better in many ways. Plus, SSD holds a larger storage capacity, uses less power consumption, and has a longer lifespan, which as you can imagine, is much better for the environment. With a future that uses SSD storage arrays, I think digital data destruction is going to be a process that starts with a wipe, followed up with a shred, and concluded with a THANK YOU to the IT managers for saving both their company and, perhaps just as importantly, our environment!

In conclusion, our ITAD company provides every method of data destruction and also buys used IT hardware like decommissioned data storage arrays, rack servers, networking hardware and most other data center and business IT hardware. Call 877-592-6009 or Email Support@ITAD-Company.com for help or more information.

From all of us at the ITAD company, thank you for your time, and we look forward to helping if we can.